A presidential plea for rent control, California realtors under a Justice Department magnifying glass and an unlikely viral video hit. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of July 15-19.
Miss: Biden’s Rent Control Idea. President Biden was in the real estate spotlight this week when he called on Congress to pass legislation that would give “corporate landlords a choice to either cap rent increases on existing units at 5% or risk losing current valuable federal tax breaks.” Without identifying the “corporate landlords” by name, the White House insisted these entities were arbitrarily raising rents. It is unlikely that the divided Congress will unite behind this proposal, which was overwhelmingly slammed by housing industry leaders as failing to address to core causes for the lack of affordable rental housing.
Miss: Another Slam at Realtors. Also this week, Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a “formal inquiry” into the California Association of Realtors (CAR) in response to a complaint by the Consumer Federation of America that insisted two new CAR contracts contained “anti-consumer provisions,” including a new buyer-agent representation agreement that was criticized for being “too disorganized and complex for the average homebuyer to understand.” The exact focus of this inquiry was not made public, but in view of this action plus the DOJ’s efforts to abrogate its 2020 settlement with the National Association of Realtors and Biden’s claim that broker commissions are raising home prices, one needs to wonder why this White House is so hostile to the real estate profession.
Miss: Reform or Revenge? Perhaps more disturbing than the rent control proposal and the CAR inquiry was an Associated Press report that claimed Biden was “seriously considering proposals” to redesign the U.S. Supreme Court with term limits for the justices and an ethics code that “would be enforceable under law.” Biden was also considering the call for a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling. While these changes are being promoted as reforms, they smell like revenge by a president whose agenda has been repeatedly thwarted by a branch of government that he cannot control – and that is ironically unsettling behavior from someone who claims his opponent represents a “threat to democracy.”
Hit: Hook Up the Chicago Gas. Kudos the Chicago City Council for not embracing Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance, which sought to end natural gas connections in new homes and buildings. The Chicago Sun-Times reported the proposal is indefinitely stalled in the Council’s Rules Committee, and that state of limbo was encouraged by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 – Marc Poulos, the union’s executive director, said the mayor’s plan would be “killing a bunch of jobs at the behest of special-interest environmental groups.” Johnson has vowed to push forward, but the likelihood of his bulldozing the union to get his way is slim-to-nil.
Hit: A New Online Star. A feel-good story of the week involved Mike Hege, a 43-year-old North Carolina realtor who became an unlikely viral sensation thanks to the 27-year-old video marketing manager at his company. Hege, a realtor at Pridemore Properties in Charlotte, requested a video for presentation on his Instagram and TikTok pages. The resulting video carried the on-screen caption “Asked my Gen Z employee to edit a video for me, and this is what I got!” – and the presentation consisted of a comic montage of a smiling Hege pausing for heavy inhaled breaths while speaking on his property tours. Hege’s unlikely appearance captured nearly 3.5 million views within four days of going online – and, of course, if that translates into an upswing in sales, then Hege will truly get the last laugh.
Hit: Good Vibes by Investors. The industry ended this week with good news via the new RCN Capital/CJ Patrick Company Investor Sentiment Index, which found real estate investor sentiment during the second quarter rose by 16% from the previous quarter. The new data report also found 60% of investors viewed today’s market as better or much better than it was a year ago, compared to only 20% who felt it was worse or much worse. Looking ahead, 61% of investors expected the market to continue improving while 14% expected it to decline – the highest percentage of positive responses and lowest percentage of negative responses since data was tracked. Here’s hoping that good vibes transition into a great investment environment.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
Photo: AndreyPopov / iStock
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“One needs to wonder why this White House is so hostile to the real estate profession.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. And that viral video was hilarious! Great round up this week.
Historically, the Department of Justice is independent of the President, and its decisions in individual cases and investigations are largely immune from his interference or direction. But that may change now following the decision in Trump v. United States (2024).
Let’s not forget that the DOJ first brought its investigation against NAR in 2019, under the Trump presidency.
Mitch McConnell stole Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat, allowing Trump, a president who did not win the popular vote, the ability to appoint 3 conservative Supreme Court Justices.
“By the start of the Civil War, the number of Supreme Court justices had increased to nine in order to cover additional circuit courts in the expanding American West. But Abraham Lincoln, upset over the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott and wanting to cement an anti-slavery majority on the Court, added a 10th justice in 1863.
After the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, Congress clashed with Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who was rapidly undoing the “Radical Republicans’” plan for Reconstruction. To limit Johnson’s power, Congress passed legislation in 1866 that cut the number of Supreme Court justices back to seven, all but assuring that Johnson wouldn’t have the opportunity to fill a vacant seat.”
The last time Congress changed the number of Supreme Court justices was in 1869, again to meet a political end. Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868 with the backing of the congressional Republicans who had hated Johnson. As a gift to Grant, Congress increased the number of justices from seven back to nine, and Grant gamely used those picks.”
I have not seen President Biden’s plan to reform the Supreme Court, but “…news broke that the Biden administration is planning to support several proposals for structural Supreme Court reforms that may include legislation to create enforceable ethics rules for the nine sitting justices as well as term limits.
Enforceable Ethics Rules and term limits for the Supreme Court sounds like a great idea in my humble opinion.
No term limits for SCOTUS until after term limits are in place for Congress first. 2 terms, three max.
Wow, quite the political rant that has almost nothing to do with the subject at hand. Trump vs. United States (2024) changed nothing. It verified a generally accepted legal issue that had not yet been tested in the courts. And it became necessary to adjudicate BECAUSE of the Biden administration’s interferance in pressing “lawfare” against his political opponent. The DOJ may have brought the original suit under Trump, but as you pointed out, the DOJ generally opperates without interferance from the administration and, as we know, there were a lot of anti Trump people in the deep state doing their best to undermine Trump at every turn. Mitch McConnell did not “steal” Merrick Garland’s supream court seat, he followed precedent and postponed a vote during an election year. And thank God he did, what a bullet we dodged having that peice of work in the Supreme Court. As far as Trump not winning the popular vote, who cares (anti American leftists care). We have the electoral college, the purpose of which is to make sure the government does not igore smaller states and communities and have a more balanced approach to governing. Additionally, politicians would campaign differently (i.e. ignore politically insignificant areas of the country) if the election were decided by popular vote, so it is a non issue. SCOTUS number of judges is not fixed, unfortunately, but regardless of which “side” does it, changing the number is always a political act. If we are going to “fix” SCOTUS, the first thing that should be done is permanently set the number of justices to nine. To my understanding, SCOTUS already has ethics rules. Any proposal to create “enforceable” ethics rules in this political environment is simply a power grab to create a “sword of Damocles” that the politicos can hold over the court so they can control it. Horrible idea and a (non)solution in search of a problem. I might get behind term limits for SCOTUS for the simple reason that new appointees would be predictable and evenly divided between administrations. However, there is something about lifetime appointments that preserves SCOTUS impartiality and limits political ideology in the justices, so, if we do this, it should be well thought through first.
I’m with DreKig. Most definitely lifetime term limits for Congress, both sides, as long as they don’t get a retirement for just serving a few years.
To you and DreKig, we have had term limits since the beginning of the Republic; a thing called elections. That sounds a bit snarky, and, well, because it is, but it’s also true. I believe term limits are really just the voters relieving themselves from taking responsibility for the government we elected. We have term limits here in The Democratic Socialists Republic of California for state offices, and things are just as bad, if not worse, than before. What you end up with are a bunch of political neophytes that are easily manipulated by career bureaucrats and we end up being ruled by people unknown and unelected. The real problem is government is far too big, has far more power over us than was ever intended by the founders, and generally uninformed voters that do not take their vote seriously that keep voting the same idiots back into office election after election no matter how badly they govern. Throw in some vote fraud, an agenda driven media, and here we are. The solution to many of our problems is to reduce the size and scope of government.